Petites Affaires
by The Flying Breadstick
Summary: Adopted son, chicken boy, nude model and prostitute: what else was Jack before he turned pirate? A spirited tale of love and loss, angst and adolescence, childhood and, er, chickens.
1. I Control the Breakfast Monkey

**Disclaimer:** I am in no way affiliated with Disney or _Pirates of the Caribbean_, no profit is being made from this work, plots and unrecognisable characters are mine, etc. etc.

**A/N:** My take on the life-story of Jack, initially a one-shot that sprang from two 'background' (or not) objects in the first and third films of the series and, er, evolved; see if you can figure out what they are. The pairings are Jack/OC(s) and Jack/Beckett, so if neither are your thing…  
_Warning:_ Pretentiousness, cute children, and casual disregard for the fourth wall abounds; continue at your peril.

* * *

**Première**

**I.**

It was in the middle of a most pleasant dream—a dream she had not dreamt in a while, the favourite of all her dreams, the one where she had finally tracked down her rake of a husband and was beating him to death with a shovel—that Abby's eight-year-old son decided to pounce on her: He tugged at her hair and clothes, pinched her groggy, bewildered nose and cheeks and, as a last resort, took to jumping up and down on the uncomfortable mattress, happily chirping she wake up.

At that moment, Abby wanted nothing more than to _kill_ him.

"Jack…" she mumbled, raising her hand in a futile gesture at silencing him; "Jackie, please…"

She soon realised that her groaning was nothing short of ineffectual; on the contrary, it only encouraged him. Not only did his jumping increase, but Jack had also pulled off her blanket—no great loss, as with the exception of the humid monsoon season, Bombay was always swelteringly hot—and, wrapping it loosely about his wrist, proceeded to slap her unprotected face with a curling edge of scratchy wool.

"_Jack…_" The warning in her voice was unmistakeable; the boy giggled and, in a moment of grave underestimation, chose to ignore it, bringing the cloth back down for one final rousing smack—

Abby's hand snapped out, fingers clawing at the merciless material, and pulled it towards her with unexpected resolution; Jack, who had of course been gripping tightly with both brown hands in anticipation of a tug-of-war, fell towards his mother's supine body with an indignant squeak.

"_Mum!_" he squealed as the woman wrapped her arms tightly about him and turned on her side, eyes snapping shut as she feigned a snore, "Mama! _Mum,_ we have to get up _now_!"

Abby grunted the grunt of the deservedly sleepy, her hand gently swatting his smooth cheek. "'S too early, you go sleep…" she grumbled, clutching her only child tighter.

Even at that tender age, Jack refused to be contained—even if the bars of his prison were the arms of his own mother. He curled and stretched, wriggled and kicked and generally made such a fuss that Abby was forced to admit defeat; she loosened her hold and allowed her bouncing son to pull her up into a sitting position, yawning and rubbing her eye. She looked sleepily around her, cursing unabashedly in her native tongue; Jack heard and set about to quietly repeating it, carefully filing it away in his mental collection of Bad Words. He stopped when he became aware of her glaring at him.

"Honestly Jack, it's still dark…"

"That's 'cause the shutters are closed," he informed her with all the air of an adult patiently explaining a basic worldly fact to a particularly slow child. Abby regretted drawing his attention to this tiny detail, for fifteen seconds later, the boy had leapt over the bed and thrown the shutters wide open. The bright light of late dawn was like an explosion in the small room, searing her unaccustomed eyes; instinctively, her lids snapped shut, a hand reaching up to shield her unseeing gaze further.

"Don't be so lazy," Jack reprimanded merrily, crawling across the mattress to take her dark hand in his far smaller one. "You have to get _up,_ and get _dressed,_ and I'm very hungry, so you have to give me something to eat too."

There were times when Abby found his childish self-centredness positively endearing, but it goes without saying that that fateful morning was not one of them; rather than smiling indulgently or playfully swiping at his head, she chose instead to sharply order he go fetch her a suitable item of clothing.

Jack was encased in a bubble of unsuppressed excitement, and therefore remained unhurt by his mother's response; he sat down next to her, his eagerness such that he did not voice his customary protest at being sent on a _girl's_ errand, which fetching clothes undoubtedly was.

"Would you like an English dress?" he asked her. "Would you like one of Mr Armistade's?"

Abby stiffened at his innocent mention of the man who, up until that very morning, had been her lover and protector, and now was nothing more than her master.

Her _married_ master.

It was rather silly of course, she thought dully after she'd carefully described to Jack exactly which item of clothing she desired to wear and had sent him off with an affectionate kick on his worryingly skinny rump; rather silly, that she had allowed herself to feel so betrayed, so angered, so hurt, when Abby herself was but a _pirate's_ wife. It was really rather hypocritical of her, but then again hearts, passion, _love_… None of these were exactly celebrated as pillars of rationality.

"Thank you, Jack," she said when he had returned with a wad of dove-grey cloth wrapped in his arms. She pulled the deliberately-demure fabric from out of his grip and set the bundle down beside her, than glanced disapprovingly at the dirty-nosed, tangle-haired boy with the bright brown eyes and easy, disarming smile that ten years prior had lured her away from the comforting familiarity of home and family.

"I suppose it wouldn't be entirely unfair to assume that you chose _not_ to listen to me last night?"

Jack's brown eyes widened with well-practised and successfully-applied innocence. "I don't know what you're talking about."

As Abby's husband had abandoned her and their newly-born son in Bombay on the pretext of concern for her and Jack's respective health, she had never learned to read and manipulate him as well as a wife ought to; she had, however, had the trying and tiring experience of raising Captain Teague's son, whose resemblance to his father was such that there were times when Abby believed that if she ever encountered Captain Teague again, she would be able to read his mind with all the studied skill of eight years' worth of meticulous observation. It would therefore come as no surprise that she would know that directly confronting her son would prove fruitless, and so she chose the only avenue available to her:

With an exaggerated sigh, she leant forward, placed her elbows on her knees, her chin in her palms and, now suitably positioned, initiated a staring contest.

Brown eyes met blue in a silent clash of wills: the unspoken, ongoing war of male and female, young and old, parent and child. Needless to say, the mother won: with rapid blinking and reddening cheeks, Jack lowered his head and turned abruptly away, hopelessly hoping that this late display of contrite repentance would yet spare him from his inevitable fate.

"Jack," Abby commanded in that voice that no child could truly disobey—at least not _yet_ anyway; "Stop sulking and go have your bath. Hill will help you with the water at the well; Martha will no doubt boil it for you. Go on," she said with a gesture, unconsciously imitating her despised husband; "_Shoo!_"

* * *

When the Honourable Mrs Armistade had finally quitted the bourgeois London lodgings that, though quite fitting for her role of dutiful wife of a rising East India Trading Company officer but, as the daughter of a peer of the realm, left much to be desired, she did so with the cold knowledge that her removal to India would at least allow her to discover for herself if the rumours were fuelled by anything other than malicious jealousy and the appetite for scandal that high society was so very fond of.

The rumours that Peter had found amongst the locals a concubine, and had fathered on her a boy, about Eleanor's age.

Mrs Armistade was of course no fool, having been raised to respect the fact that, unchristian and unseemly though it may be, it was very probable that her future husband would take for himself a mistress.—And if one was to consider the overall character of Mrs Armistade, one would find such probability of infidelity shift unflatteringly into certainty. The second-youngest child of the Viscount Broughton, wedged as she was between her glamorous older sister and priestly younger brother, it had seemed as though Fate was determined not to grace Mrs Armistade with any distinguishing talents or qualities right from the off. (Other than her noble birth and whatever dowry her father saw fit to bestow upon her when she had come out and come of age, provisions that were the birthright of every woman of the Hon. Mrs Armistade's rank.)

This would, of course, be the perfect opportunity for one to describe the Hon. Maria Henrietta Armistade née Broughton in full and wince-worthy detail, had it not been for the remarkable fact that the Hon. Mrs Armistade could best be described as indescribable. Though numerous adjectives had been applied to her sister, some English, some French, all flattering, Henrietta, as she was known to those who were intimate enough to address her by anything other than Mrs Armistade, had had to drudge through her debutante years dismissively alluded to as 'the younger Miss Broughton', 'the other Miss Broughton', 'the sister of the most fair/beautiful/celebrated/charming/respectful/well-mannered/Honourable Miss Broughton.' (Unlike Maria Frances, she was not even granted the courtesy 'Honourable' that, as the daughter of a viscount, should by right be hers.)

With such an insurmountable void between the gifts and charms of the two sisters, it was only to be expected that Henrietta would (justifiably) be consumed by an envy and resentment that would thus allow her to be described as envious and resentful, but alas, she was not, and hence one cannot apply these adjectives to Henrietta without gravely perjuring oneself. But neither was she indifferent to the companions, suitors and general attention Frances was bombarded with, and thus could not be classed as indifferent either. She was, in short, a conundrum; neither tedious nor insignificant enough to skip altogether, nor intriguing nor integral enough to our tale to warrant the three paragraphs wasted on describing her indescribability, but such was life.

And so, we now proceed to the Hon. Mrs Armistade's daughter, a ball of blonde hair and pink flesh that had yet reached her eighth year and who, unlike her infamously indescribable mother, could in short be described in one word: fat. (Cruel, but true.)

From the daughter we now look to the son, a beanpole of a boy who has already spent ten summers in this world, the majority of which he apparently devoted to growing taller still. He had more of his father than his mother about his features, which was a most fortunate circumstance, as not only was Lieutenant Peter Armistade considered by most to be classically and devastatingly handsome, but he was therefore classically and devastatingly handsome enough to be described as such, and by extension the same could be said of his son, thus saving a good paragraph that would otherwise be devoted to painting the physical attributes of the eyebrow-raisingly absent Armistade patriarch. ('Two birds with one stone', as they say.)

And thus were the Armistades described in wince-worthy, if not entirely full, detail, and one can breathe a sigh of relief as the narrative attempts to move seamlessly from clumsily depicting the respective characters _of_ the characters to the fateful morning that followed the last night Abby laid with her beloved Peter, the morning the Hon. Mrs Armistade arrived with her husband's flaxen-haired sprogs in the East India Trading Company-controlled port-city of Bombay, the very same morning on which Jack had pounced upon the mother that had returned to the servants' quarters for the first time in five years to lie on the alien mattress and cry herself to sleep, etc., etc.

(A careful and respectful author would, of course, seize this opportunity to describe the emerald-sapphire waves that quickly metamorphosed into diamond-like swells which lapped against the hull of the Company ship as it pulled into the not-so-long-ago Dutch port; or perhaps the blinding glow of the sun as it beat down upon the bonnet the Hon. Mrs Armistade was attempting to tie under her squealing daughter's fat, dribbling chin; or even the breeze that swayed the Indian palms as surely as it guided the vessel into port, but this tale was of no interest to such an author, and so we must make do with one who, upon being asked to describe clothing, appearances, location, weather, food, political systems etc., simply reddens and bawls "Use your bloody imagination!")

The morning on which our tale begins dawned crisp and clear, even if for no other reason than that the author is unable to think outside of various clichés: Abby, dressed demurely in the blue-grey dress her baby had fetched for her earlier that morning, clambered out of the open cart with the hindering help of her gallant son and kept her eyes lowered, thus avoiding the pained, hungry stare that Mr Armistade made no visible attempt at concealing.

To keep her thoughts away from Peter, Abby entertained herself by eying her bouncing son with a growing feeling of suspicious dread. She understood—or rather, she _believed_ she understood, the reason for Jack's irrepressible excitement: she could vaguely recall a period in her childhood where even the slightest disturbance to a well-established routine, a change of furniture perhaps, or indeed, people, brought with it an overwhelming curiosity and impatience to see for herself what next would happen. This same feeling was undoubtedly coursing through her only son at this very moment, but even so, childish excitement alone could not account for his overflowing joy. She naturally suspected that a prank had been planned.

"It is the most delightful sight, is it not?" Mr Armistade had sidled up to her, his tone wistful as he followed her gaze to where Jack sat on the edge of the dock, recently-cleaned but already-dirtied shoes dangling some three feet above the rippling water; his hand reached out for hers as he spoke, clutching her palm tightly.

Though she hated him, or rather, though she _tried_ to hate him, Abby could not pretend that his sentiments were anything other than genuine. When Peter had left London, he had left behind two children, one a longed-for successor and heir, the other a dynastic pawn; when Abby, who had eked out the last of the not ungenerous 'payment' that Captain Teague had left her three years prior, had heard tell of a domestic position of maid and had thus applied for it, Mr Armistade had found himself charmed as much by her beauty and musical manner of speech as by her comically misbehaving son: When told to be quiet, Jack had laughed; when ordered to thank, he had insulted; and finally, after Abby's doomed interview was concluded, it was discovered that Jack had attempted to make off with a rather expensive candlestick.

Rather than report them to the appropriate authorities, Peter had hired Mrs Teague at once, and in the years that followed it had brought him a secret joy to converse, teach and play with the errant child he slowly came to regard as his own. So strong did this belief take hold that, unbeknownst to Abby, Peter had encouraged Jack to write to his own son as though they were brothers, and these secret missives were smuggled into the Armistades' London home in the thick wad of papers that the officer sent to England on a monthly basis. This correspondence had continued for about a year, though it must be said that Peter had had to transcribe several of the boy's letters himself, as Jack was still learning his letters, though he did try. And now, after thirteen months of slow reading and slower writing, Jack would finally see the face of the boy who had so dutifully replied to all of his messages, hence his early rise and general bounciness.

All in all, Peter was looking forward to the arrival of his small and beloved family: he did not fear cold, snide treatment of Jack and Abby, at least not from Jason; and Nell, being but a baby, would of course follow her brother's lead, and Henrietta would naturally comply with his wishes. As a matter of fact, Peter's only fear was that his wife, upon learning that her son had befriended the child of her husband's ill-hidden mistress (whom she must surely have heard of, gossips being what they are), would succumb to a fit of hatred and betrayal. He may not love Henrietta, but he had never wished to do her harm; which was why, after receiving his wife's third plea to join him in the growing Empire's far-flung post, he had chosen to grant her polite and unfortunately reasonable request, and end the liaison with the woman he loved. Peter Armistade did not have in him the cruelty required to parade his lover before Henrietta, who after all had been as good and dutiful a wife as any Christian man could hope for.

"Jack," the gentleman called, strolling towards the child with Abby tugged reluctantly behind him, determined to offer the boy some last-minute advice; the dark speck that marred the horizon had at last focused, and if one squinted, one could just about make out the gleaming paint of the word _Intrepid_, the newest and fastest ship owned by the Company. It was said that Thomas Beckett, whose twenty-odd year reign had seen the Company expand and prosper through a mixture of casual violence and carefully-cultivated London acquaintances via his wife, a certain Hon. Frances Broughton, had designed the ship to his own specifications. Considering how only sheer luck had dropped the East India Trading Company into his lap (if it hadn't been for the death of a cousin, Thomas would no doubt be earning his bread as a Company-employed shipwright), Peter supposed that this was true.

"Jack, come on," Armistade repeated firmly as the lad made a show of paying no heed; "you don't want my wife and children's first impression of you to be one of a scruffy-clothed, tangle-haired, dirty-nosed rapscallion who thinks nothing of his appearance?"

"But I _am_ a scruffy-clothed, tangle-haired, dirty-nosed rapscallion what thinks nothing of his appearance," Jack sung happily back, and to prove it he promptly pushed himself off of the dock and into the water.

"JACK!"

Though Abby had rushed to Peter's side, neither knew—nor cared—who had cried out: they were of course far too frantic to worry over such trivialities. Abby was just preparing to throw herself in after her son, but Peter caught her in his arms before she could do so, and clutched tightly to her as she struggled and cursed. At any other time, such contact would provoke her legs into trembling, her stomach into turning; but now that her only child had all but drowned himself, such palpable sexual tension would therefore be most inappropriate. Conditions being what they were, Peter merely clung tighter to her arms, alternating between half-hearted attempts at soothing her and ordering his footman to _fetch that stupid, reckless boy!_

Unbeknownst to either Peter or Abby, Jack had been learning to swim: there was a boy in the charity school he attended at the local church, Stuart, whose father was a fisherman, and every day after school (if sitting in a 'classroom' meekly pretending to read a book or doodling when he ought to be concentrating on his sums could be called that), Stuart would take Jack home to his father, and what followed would be an hour's worth of splashing about in a river miserably failing to float. Naturally, both master and mother were aware of where he was, but they had simply assumed that the boys went to play whatever it was that boys played in the sunshine. Far be it for them to entertain the thought that a visit to the fisherman could prove to be _educational._

Although Stuart had been a fisherman's son, it was Jack who proved to be the natural proficient: he supposed he ought not to be surprised, as his mother was after all the widow of an English merchant sailor or the like… Anyway, after three months, Jack had announced he'd grown bored of swimming from one bank to the other. He proposed they tackle the sea.

His suggestion was met with a patronising smile and shaking head. Affronted, he had asked what was wrong with his suggestion, only to be told that the sea was too dangerous for a beginner such as himself. This was of course completely illogical, and Jack proceeded to tell him so: after all, the rivers were populated with poisonous snakes and bloodthirsty leeches and snapping crocodiles and fire-breathing water-dragons and flesh-eating water-daisies and carnivorous chipmunks and eyeball-eating elves and swimming knives and—

"Well _this_ river ain't," the fisherman interrupted once Jack had ranted in this vein for what he deemed long enough. "Now get into the water boy, yer kick needs some tendin' to."

And to make matters even more frustrating than they really needed to be was the minute detail that, very rarely in his day-to-day routine did Jack come across the vast, unending, undulating ocean. (Not that he actually _knew_ what undulating meant, of course; but he'd once overheard a rather pompous officer, newly-sent down from a place called the West Country, attempting to compose a letter aloud, and he'd said, "It is indeed a sad and unfulfilled life led by the man who has never set eyes on the vast, unending ocean, the waves of which swell and undulate with all the hypnotic seduction of a heaving, generously-proportioned bosom of a blue-skinned Irish milkmaid…" Jack had thanked the officer for extending his vocabulary by placing a large dead spider in his breakfast tea the next morning.)

It should go without saying that, ever since Jack's suggestion of swimming in the sea had been so casually dismissed, swimming in the sea was all he then thought about; which was why, when Mr Armistade and Mama—er, _Mum_—had announced that Mr Armistade's family would be coming to stay with them, and that they were to greet them on the docks as and when their ship made port, Jack had promptly run around the breakfast table, squealing in excitement. It was also why, after helping his mother step down from the cart, Jack had skipped down to the end of the jetty, fully intending to dive into the ocean's welcoming waves and prove to _all_ of them—Mama, Mr Armistade, Stuart, the fisherman who was Stu's father whose name he could never quite remember—that he could swim in the sea and _not drown._

Such enthusiastic ideas were quickly squashed when Jack skidded to the end of the jetty and looked down: down into the water that hissed like a den of cobras, each swell providing a glimpse of venomous fangs; down into the waves, soaring up like reaching fingers to drag him to a watery grave…

After thinking about the sea in this manner for a little longer, Jack swiftly came to the conclusion that perhaps jumping into the ocean wasn't the _best_ of ideas.

_But what if you never get another chance?_ a voice whispered in his ear, its breath causing Jack to shudder and reach up to rub his lobe; _You said it yourself: you _never _see the sea… It's very unfair, you know it is… And you _are _a _very good _swimmer…_

The strangely solemn imp continued to alternately whisper words of seduction and encouragement as Jack sat down with his legs dangling over the edge of the wooden jetty, and as it did so the ocean seemed to calm before his very eyes; he could sense her arms opening wide in anticipation of his leap, heard her reassuring hiss: _Don't worry; I'll catch you…_

And then Mr Armistade had come trotting along, his kind blue eyes sparkling as he insisted that Jack make himself more presentable, and it was only then that the boy knew, once and for all, that he wanted to feel the ocean's cool embrace…

And besides, he thought wickedly as his body tensed in expectation, not even his mother could make him presentable in wet clothes and shoes. And so he jumped.

The world seemed to slow as he fell the five feet or whatever distance it was; and in that agonising fall, thoughts flashed in his mind, jostling one another in their eagerness to terrify him: What if there were sharks? What if there were water serpents? What if carnivorous sirens reached up and pulled him down with their curved talons, baring their teeth in anticipation of fresh meat…

But then his feet had pushed through the surface of the restless ocean, and after a few seconds of kicking and struggling to return to the flickering daylight, after Jack's head had broken the surface and he had settled into bobbing gently up and down as he trod water, a feeling of calm, of triumph, exploded within him. _This wasn't difficult or dangerous at all,_ he thought as his mother screamed and his father—sorry, Mr Armistade—ordered a handful of Company men and bystanders to "Fetch that stupid, reckless boy!"

Blinking, Jack looked up into the shadow of the overhanging jetty and, laughing, flipped onto his back, pulling himself into the sunlight with one backstroke after another. The water reached through his clothes to pulse, alive, against his skin in a way that the river never had, making its submission to his strokes and kicks all the more delicious as he splashed and laughed his way towards the open ocean.

No words could truly describe the euphoria, the triumph, the amalgamation of his mind, body and soul, the first time he swam in the clear blue waters whose coolness contrasted starkly with its sun-warmed surface. This certainly wasn't for want of trying, as Abby and Stuart (and Abby) and Peter (and Abby) and Jason (and Abby again) could testify: Jack chatted of nothing else over the weeks that followed, and he described it thusly: "You know that feeling you get when your ma becomes mistress to a wealthy and important gentleman, and you wake up in your own bed with cotton sheets, and a servant comes in and pours you a hot bath, and you only wash because Mum makes you, and then the servant asks you what it is you want for breaking your fast, and you tell 'em, and they go away, and they come back with it on a plate and some water and put it on your desk and leave again, and then you wait until they're out of hearing before shouting '_HA!_ I control the Breakfast Monkey!' for the very first time in your life? Well it feels just like that, only much more better."

Chortling happily, Jack pulled in a deep breathe and submerged himself beneath the waves, his brown eyes snapped tightly shut as his arms flailed pointlessly. He wanted to see how long he could stay there, struggling valiantly not to slip too far away from air, light, life, beneath the spray and shifting waves; the kingdom of fish and mermaids, whales and sharks—

_SHARKS!_

And with this sudden spurt of panic, Jack kicked up to the surface, gulping in gasps of blessed air. He hadn't actually _seen_ any sharks, of course, but the realisation that they were there, _somewhere,_ in the vast, undulating ocean with him… He shook his head, dark brown hair clinging to his face and neck like ebony ink, and turning clumsily in the water, faced the outlines of the dock and jetty. His heart sank as he saw just how far he'd allowed himself to drift… But that hardly mattered; surely only good could come of the practice… Setting his pointed jaw, Jack squared his shoulders, unsquared them as the movement caused him to bob dangerously downwards and, face screwed in concentration, began to make his way towards the shore.

It didn't take him long to realise that such a feat would prove to be impossible. Frowning, Jack flipped from lying on his front to treading water with his hands and feet, 'resting' as he attempted to piece together a last-minute plan. So far, this consisted of nothing more cunning than keeping his head above the water and shrieking, "Mum! _MUUUUUUUUUUUUM!_"—but then again, he was but eight.

He could make out Peter lunging to grab his mother's shoulders as she started forward, cursing him as two Company men, presumably on Mr Armistade's order, seized each of her arms and pulled her a safe distance away from the jetty—And then Mr Armistade had turned to face him, shouting words of advice and reassurance; the longboat was all but ready, he said, and urged him to continue to fight against the current, which he was doing so very well for a little boy…

_Currants,_ Jack thought numbly as he struggled to follow Mr Armistade's advice. He liked currants; only had them once though, in England, when he was about six. Mr Armistade returned to his homeland on an annual basis, seeing to business and, of course, his family, and a couple of years ago, he had decided to bring Abby and her son along with him. Presumably he wished to introduce his English family to his Indian one, Jack neither knew nor cared, but he must have lost his nerve, because then Peter and his Mum had an argument (furnishing Jack's mental directory with a good deal of Bad Words in the process); Mr Armistade had stormed off, and in retaliation Abby had made many friends amongst Mr Armistade's male staff (which didn't make Peter very happy, though Jack couldn't fathom why). Anyway, Abby and Mr Armistade grudgingly realised that despite what they may have told one another, they still loved the other passionately, and therefore had no desire to separate just yet; Peter came back to Abby, and they talked for a very long time, and the next day Mr Armistade took Jack for a walk through the local village near his country estate, and had bought Jack his first and only currant bun, and Jack had liked it very much, but _that_ hardly mattered, as he was going to die now.

For reasons which, on reflection, really weren't reasonable at all, Jack opened his mouth to scream, swallowing impossibly large mouthfuls of saltwater in the process; coughing and sputtering, he whimpered and, abandoning all that the fisherman had taught him, flailed his arms and kicked his feet in an attempt at remaining above the surface; and all the while he heard his name, loud, frenzied, growing ever more distant…

His arms felt incredibly heavy, as though a cunning siren had slipped up behind him and strapped weights of lead to his wrists, and his ankles, and his nose, and now he was falling, slipping, _drowning…_ Down, down, down, the water sliding up his nostrils, stinging his eyes, forcing its way into his throat, and then…

Silence.


	2. I Want to Hug Kitty

**A/N:** Bloody hell! Five reviews, two favourites, and eight alerts, only three of whom are "regular" readers? So _this_ is what happens when you write slash… But seriously, thank you all for making my weekend. Whilst I have your hopefully undivided attention, I'd like to remind you all that this fic is Jack/various OCs _as well as_ unrepentently Speckett; and as the latter won't be appearing until much later, I've decided to tide over the Speckett shippers with some semi-seasonal multi-chapter fluff, **Snowflakes**. Now read on…

* * *

**II.**

"Is it dead?" It was a girl's voice that had spoken; small, squeaky, babyish. Jack wrinkled his nose and groaned; he wanted to sit up and hit the child whose voice had pierced through his auditory shield, but he couldn't even find the strength to open his eyes.

"Wet kitty," the voice said again, as chipper as ever. "Dead wet kitty." A finger poked him squarely in the ribs, achieving that where sheer willpower alone had failed: Jack sputtered, water leaking from between his lips, eyes snapping open only to screw tightly shut as the Indian sun shone directly into his pupils. Beside him, he heard the girl let out a delighted squeal: "It's awake, it's awake! Papa, papa! Look, look!" and other exclamations which she felt the need to repeat for impact. Jack's desire to hit her quickly turned into the yearning to strangle her.

"Thank you, Nell," he heard Mr Armistade's voice reply warmly; there was a giggle, and then the sound of two (admittedly heavy) feet being sat on the ground, Peter's low, conspiratorial whisper, another of the girl's high-pitched giggles… the sound of waddling feet attempting to run back to him, accompanied by deep, labouring breaths; the feel of something being thrown over him, a blanket, or was it a towel? Whatever it was, it made Jack realise that he was cold, and he began to shiver, teeth chattering. Above him, the girl tutted in a way that struck Jack as being undeniably maternal.

"Poor cold, wet kitty," she sniffed disapprovingly, and Jack had the wind knocked out of him in a horrified squeak as she suddenly jumped on him, her arms going about his waist in a bone-crushing hug.

"Eleanor!" he heard a woman gasp in disapprobation. "Just what do you think you're doing? Get off that—" She hesitated a moment, and Jack couldn't help but suspect that she had been about to call him by a term that, though indubitably polite enough to come from a lady's lips, was unpleasant nevertheless. "Get off that boy," she said instead, but all that Eleanor did was giggle and clutch tighter. Jack gasped, his eyes screwing ever tighter shut in pain as his arms reached up to bat at her round shoulders.

"Get…off…" he gasped, wheezing as his skinny limbs flailed about helplessly.

"_Eleanor…_"

"No!" she cried, and clutched tighter still. Jack swore he heard a bone crack.

"P-P-Please…?" Abby always told him that Please was the Magic Word, so maybe if he said it she'll go flying off him, whizzing up into the cerulean blue sky, never to be seen again.

It was a pity it didn't work.

"_My_ kitty-cat! Mine!"

"El—" the mother—or so Jack assumed, began once more before stopping and turning to someone else in sheer exasperation. "Mr Armistade," she intoned, quite formally, "might you intervene? She _is_ your daughter, after all." So perhaps she wasn't this Eleanor's mother after all, but rather a governess; but if that was the case, her calling her pupil by her Christian name was something of an impertinence (not that he could actually talk), and from what little he could tell by the sound of her voice, this woman was not one to be impertinent.

"Come along, Nellie," Jack heard Peter's voice gently coax; "You're squashing him, don't you see? And you have lots of other people to hug besides Jack, you know."

"No!" the girl said again, this time with something, a precursor to a tantrum, he suspected, ringing in her voice. "_I_ want to hug Kitty, and hug Kitty I will." And God forbid, but she actually squeezed him _tighter_ at this.

Jack fast decided that he had had enough; with an effort that strained several muscles in both arms and back, his scrabbling hands found footing on her rounded, lace-edged dress, pushing up against her shoulders. The dress was of fine silk, soft and smooth against his fingertips, but Jack didn't notice anything other than that it had an annoying habit of slipping against his skin so that, when his hands, sliding over her shoulders in an inadvertent hug, hurriedly scurried down once more, more often than not he found his hands _down_ her dress rather than _on_ it.

"Ah! Stop it!" Eleanor squealed, her heavy body twisting in protest against his escape attempts. "_Bad_ kitty, _bad!_ You're tickling me, stop!" And spoilt, stubborn as she was, Eleanor merely increased the pressure; Jack snarled in a retaliation so feline that for a moment all onlookers agreed that he did warrant his nickname before, seized by a sudden, simple, _brilliant_ idea (as was prone to happen to Jack), he deliberately stuck both hands into her dress, his blunt fingers scratching against her delicate skin as he tickled her, to death if need be.

"_NO!_" the girl whimpered, irked that the tables had been turned. Furious that her authority had been so publicly undermined, her chubby arms reached out, fingers clawing at his face; with a yelp of pain, Jack gave her flabby body one final, desperate push, and with a squeal, she fell squarely onto her backside, bonnet askew, dress disarrayed, mouth hanging open. With a deep, satisfying breath, Jack straightened up, pulling the blanket protectively over him and, blinking stupidly, surveyed the creature that had nearly killed him.

Her stockinged legs lay out in front of her, poking visibly from out of her bundled pink skirts, small feet contrasting sharply with thick calves, making her tubbiness all the more apparent. Her petticoats were white, glowing blindingly in the sun, making her skin seem sickly pale; or perhaps he was simply used to the rich ochre tones of the natives. Even Peter, who Jack had always thought of as rather pallid, seemed brown in comparison to his daughter's English complexion. Her hands, splayed on either side of her hips the better to support her, were nothing short of a surprise; even with a child's puppy fat, the fingers were long, slender, elegant, betraying the aristocratic lineage she had inherited from her mother.

After staring at her quivering, heavily-breathing body a little longer, Jack's brown eyes slowly moved up to her face. Her fair hair had been pinned back in a braid that seemed to encompass her entire skull, making her round face seem all the rounder, and the cheeks were full, glowing red from both her unexpected exertions and the unaccustomed heat. Her nose, like her eyes, had the appearance of drowning, sunken as they were in that large, inflated flesh; its tip appeared abnormally small, all but insignificant in that round, childish face. It reminded Jack of those Egyptian pyramids Peter had spun him tales about, the triangular tombs of ancient kings, half buried in the sands of time… They, Jack realised with sudden conviction, must now look exactly like Nell's nose.

After the momentary surprise had passed, the girl, still breathing heavily, screwed up her small, piggy eyes and burst into tears, causing the woman Jack believed was her governess to cry out and rush towards her, her voluminous skirts whipping Jack's arm as she rushed by.

"Oh Eleanor!" she exclaimed, scooping the bawling baby (though she must have been about Jack's age) into her arms; "Shh, shh my darling, shush shush… Mama's here, my sweet, hush now…" Ah; so not a governess after all, then. A small part of Jack was sensible enough to be grateful that his assumption had been disproved before he could open his mouth and offend his new mistress. This same part was also telling him, in no uncertain terms, that Jack had been very silly and stupid, to go jumping into the sea like that, and that he must, from then on, keep his feet planted firmly on terra firma, but as always, Jack chose to ignore the sensible voice's advice.

Mrs Armistade, in a bid at soothing her unabashedly weeping child, had retreated some distance away, a ball of pink silk and flesh, easily half her size, clutched tightly to her chest; Jack's eyes followed the two English females with a feeling of dread gnawing at the pit of his stomach. He had a horrible vision of waking up every morning with that loud, shrill creature wrapped tightly about his waist, slowly crushing his skeleton, one rib at a time; no, he didn't much like _her_ at all. And as for Mrs Armistade… Here Jack hesitated, because he was unable to describe what it was that made him—well, not _dislike_ her as such, but… not like her very much…

Shaking his head for no reason other than a desire to rid himself of jumbled thoughts his young mind couldn't quite comprehend, Jack's big brown eyes landed guiltily on Mr Armistade; the good officer was leaning against the railing of the ship, dressed in nothing more than his shirt and breeches, a blanket of his own flung about his shoulders. Like Jack, he was soaked to the skin; his light hair, which less than an hour before had been so carefully coiffed, hung about his face and shoulders in darkened waves of rich golden brown, and his impossibly blue eyes seemed to sparkle with a kind of fever… He raised an eyebrow when Jack's gaze met his, as if to say, _Well, boy?_ and as he did so, the beginnings of shame, a gnawing, acidic nausea, flooded his entrails, making Jack hastily avert his eyes.

As it happened, Jack need not have feared Mr Armistade's anger, for Mr Armistade was one of those forward-thinking men who did not believe that there was anything to gain from blind, red, neck-snapping rage, barring a death sentence and confiscation of all worldly possessions, that is. This was not to say that Mr Armistade did not _feel_ anger, or the urge to throttle the boy he had dived after in a last-minute rescue attempt when it was made clear the longboat would not be readied in time, simply that he did his best not to _express_ such unseemly emotion: rage was most unchristian, children learn by example, and other such justifications. Logically Jack knew this, but even so he was but a child, and children invariably tend to think of the worst.

This last Peter knew; and so, after little Nell was carefully appeased and sufficiently contented to watch, sulking, from the safety of her mother's arms, he approached the damp bundle that lay, curled up and shivering, in the shadow of the captain's cabin, touched his shoulder, and gently murmured, "'You alright?"

Shyly, with his head still buried in the blanket, Jack nodded firmly, singularly. A smile tugged at Peter's lips.

"Are you sure?"

The answering nod was more vigorous than the first. Sighing, Peter stealthily reached out and, with one fast, well-timed tug, unveiled the wet, shivering boy with a startled cry of outrage.

"Now you listen closely, Jack," he said as he knelt down before the child, rubbing his dripping face with one of the dry corners of the cloth, "What you did today was—and I cannot stress this enough—an idiotic, imbecilic, injudicious, and above all, _stupid_ thing to do. You should by right be birched, do you understand?"

From under Mr Armistade's rubbing hand came a long, slow nod of apologetic acceptance. Mr Armistade made note of the boy's apparent contrition, knowing full well that the emotion was sincere—for the present. With a sigh, Peter Armistade pulled away, surveying the little imp with grudging affection. The boy was still shivering, shivering for a fear that was as ungrounded as it was illogical.

"You know…" Peter began in a low, conspiratorial tone; out of the corner of his eye he saw his daughter, who, clearly annoyed that she was unable to overhear, turn to her mother and demand "I want you to put me down _now._"

It had the desired effect; Jack's water-clogged ears pricked in anticipation of an imparted secret, his back straightening as he leant ever closer, rivulets of saltwater running down his smooth skin to splash on the whorled wood below. "Know what?" he asked, in a low, hurried whisper. Peter continued to enticingly hold the boy's gaze whilst in the background Nell's demands grew ever more shrill: "Now now now now _now_!"

"Well…" Mr Armistade temptingly trailed off, pausing to tuck a strand of dark hair behind Jack's ear, run a hand through his own damp locks, and call out words chosen to soothe his daughter.

"Well what?" Jack urged, his voice rising half an octave in his excitement; only then did Peter drag his eyes away from his daughter to fix on his all but adopted son a steely glare.

"Do you know Jack, I'm starting to think that, in light of your recent mischief, I ought not to tell you at all?"

Jack's bright face fell at his master's casual, measured words. "…W-W-W-What?" His disappointment was truly heartbreaking. Peter released an exaggerated sigh, tossed Jack back the blanket and, rising to his full height, looked imperiously down at Jack, who sat with his spindly legs splayed before him as he stared up with wide, disconsolate eyes.

"Well, you've been a very naughty boy, haven't you? And I can't go about giving naughty boys rewards." (It seemed devoid of innuendo at the time.)

He had barely taken five steps before Jack's arms had latched about his legs in a manner not unlike Nell's, words tumbling from his lips as he hurried to apologise and promise and plead, the blanket trailing behind him like a makeshift tail. Grinning wickedly, Peter allowed the child to make a fool of himself for a minute longer before gently kicking himself free of Jack's clasp and bending down to impart the knowledge he had gleaned from Mrs Armistade in the five or so minutes Jack had lain on the sunlit deck, unconscious but safe.


	3. You're Supposed to Kiss It

**A/N:** It's been a while since I updated, for which I apologise. There is also the introduction of a character whom many will no doubt regard as Mary-Sueish, for which I do not apologise. As always, reviews make the author's world go round. ;)

**III.**

Jason Armistade was but seven years old when he chose to pursue the fickle and more often than not disappointing trade of the artist. The three years that followed this sudden conviction had been spent sketching miscellaneous household pets and objects in secret, whilst publicly he continued to follow all the quasi-ritualistic minutiae befitting his status as gentleman's son and probable future naval officer: He learnt languages, mathematics, geography, history and the Classics under the guidance of various tutors; thrusted, parried, and pirouetted under the instruction of his fencing and dancing masters (the latter he shared with graceless, tottering Nell); fasted at Lent, attended church, and various other activities too numerous to list, thus deflecting any suspicions about his true choice of path.

Why Jason was so eager to hide his propensity for drawing was a matter of simple modesty: having never received the proper tuition of a drawing master, and being too shy to request one, Jason was convinced that his work would be the subject of much hilarity and ridicule, not least because his oranges tend to resemble carrot-coloured squares. He also believed that his mother would expressly forbid him from pursuing his art, as her chosen upbringing for her son was guided by the belief that her husband desired Jason follow in his father's footsteps. Whether this truly was the case, or a logically-deduced fabrication on his mother's part, Jason did not know.

For Jason, the crossing to India was surprisingly liberating, as only two tutors were willing to follow their shared pupil: the Classically-inclined clergyman Sterne, and the fencing master Radaelli; and, as neither gentleman were particularly used to sea travel (indeed, Radaelli found his first journey from Milan to London most disagreeable), Jason's lessons were disbanded until such time as either gentleman was able to stand for five minutes without vomiting.

Add to this benevolent stroke of luck the providential presence of Alice Carlisle, Captain Jennings's ward and orphaned niece. A twelve-year-old Scot, with skin as white and flawless as that of a porcelain doll's and hair that ran down her neck and shoulders like rivers of blood, Miss Carlisle's cold, arrogant beauty was one that could not be hidden in even the most dull of dresses; Captain Jennings was a man who had always lived and dressed simply, in browns and greens and other dark, earthy tones, and as such, dressed his niece from the same palette. Such drab colours served only to emphasise her almost unnatural colouring, and it had been when Jason had spotted her bright red hair on the London docks as she leant over the railing, clad in austere brown, bonnet dangling from her hand, for her first and last glimpse of England's capital that he had realised, once for all, that he had to paint, he _must_ paint—How could he not? he had found his muse.

Alice did of course agree to sit for him; despite her uncle's best efforts, her vanity had yet to be quelled, and she flattered herself into thinking that this taller, younger boy must have found her attractive. (He didn't, but that's beside the point.) At twelve, she considered herself to be quite grown up, and believed that within months of her arrival at Bombay, one of those profligate Indian princes (of whom many forbidden tales had been whispered to her over quiet Bible studies), ensnared by her heavenly beauty, would whisk her away from her honest uncle's clutches to live a life of decadence within luxurious palace walls. How wonderful, how exotic, how scandalous it would be when she, a Christian woman (though technically, still a girl), married a heathen Raja!—But until that anticipated moment, Alice would content herself with sitting very still whilst infatuated little boys attempted to do justice to her beauty with crumbling coal and scraps of paper.

And so it came to be that, on what Captain Jennings promised to be the last day of a long and tedious crossing, Jason was just adding the last details to Alice's portrait when from the other side of the door came a shy, timid knock. For a moment, Alice and Jason merely stared at one another, the redhead half-risen, knowing as she did that Jason's greatest fear was to have his hidden talent discovered. The children's blue eyes met in confusion, searching one another for guidance; when a second rap, quieter and more hesitant than the first, sounded, Jason's shoulders visibly relaxed, and Alice sank back into her seat; perhaps it was simply a sailor, sent down by her uncle to inform the pair that the _Intrepid_ was ready to dock.

"Yes?" the boy called out, mimicking the imperious tone he heard his mother use on servants and social inferiors.

"J-J-Jason?" The voice was small, high, timid; a boy's voice. "Jason, it's Jack."

Alice turned her head away from the door to shoot her portraitist an accusatory glare. _Jack?_ she mouthed, blue-grey eyes reproachful.

"Jack?" Jason repeated, a crease appearing between his pale eyebrows. There was no Jack on the _Intrepid_! Why, he and Alice and Nell were the only children aboard; where on earth could he have come from?

"Yes." There was a note of fear, the fear of rejection, in his voice now. "Do you know—Do you remember me? I sent you letters."

Ah, _Jack!_ The grin that appeared on Jason's face was so sudden, so bright, that Alice flinched and backed away; he looked half mad, like an escaped Bedlamite.

"Jack!" he cried, and Alice crossed her arms and huffed as the boy abandoned his sketch to wrench open the door. Curious, her eyes followed the young blond as he hesitated, looking hesitantly down at his darkened fingers before turning and—to her outrage—wiping off the coal with one of her virgin-white handkerchiefs, the one she had held clasped to her breast in the angelic pose he had chosen for her sketch. She felt briefly avenged when he reached up to run a nervous hand through his pale hair, leaving a soot-coloured streak in his wake.

"Jack," he said again when he considered himself presentable, his hand reaching down for the doorknob; "How did you get on here? I thought—I thought—"

The words died on his lips as his blue eyes fell on something that made him freeze; irritated at being so casually ignored, Alice rose to her feet, smoothing down her skirts as she attempted to peer around his shoulder to see this Jack that had so brazenly interrupted them.

"What happened?" Jason gasped, stepping backwards in wonder. A laugh forced itself from his throat. "Did you—did you actually _swim_ here?"

"Er, a little bit…" she heard the boy answer, his voice bashful. Jason stared a little while longer whilst Alice silently manoeuvred herself to catch a glimpse of a dark, bowed head, water dripping steadily from cropped hair, over Jason's tall shoulder. Jason guffawed at his reply, and Alice stamped her foot, annoyed that she was not the focus of the boys' combined attention. The sound of her heel slamming on the wood made the dripping boy raise his head, startled to discover her presence.

For the longest moment, the two of them stared at one another, unable to believe their eyes. Jack had never seen a redhead before; he'd always thought that hair ranged from very fair to very dark, with varying shades of browns and blonds in between; he had no idea that there were other colours to be had—blond, black and brown were the only options he was aware of—and yet, here stood a girl with hair the colour of the dying sun, and skin white as death.

Likewise, Alice had never before seen a child of his colour before—was he an Indian? She couldn't be certain. Alice had spent nearly all of her short life in the small fishing town of Monimaskit; she had seen some of the better-off families keep black slaves and, like Jack with hair, she believed that the shadings of skin were limited; one could be very pale, like her, and if very unlucky, freckled. Skin could also turn temporarily red in the summer before peeling off to reveal layers of darkened, golden flesh; as Monimaskit was permanently overcast, this was the darkest Alice believed Englishmen could become. And on the other side of the spectrum were the blacks, the hides of whom were always the smooth, shining shade of varnished teak; and that, as far as Alice was concerned, was that.

But this boy's skin was _brown,_ smooth, golden brown; and because he was too dark to fit into her (extremely limited) definition of white, and far too pale to be black, Alice naturally viewed him with growing suspicion.

Jason, situated as he was between the two of them, could not fail to notice their mutual stares; his yellow head whipped from one to the other, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until he had to stop and shake it for fear of growing dizzy.

Personally, he couldn't understand why they were so fascinated with one another; being a Londoner, he had seen (even if he hadn't socialised with) people with all kinds of hair, all shades of skin, unlike Alice, who would have viewed a swarthy Spaniard as exotic and strange. And it goes without saying that redheads weren't unfamiliar to him. After another second of silence had passed, it suddenly dawned on Jason that the reason the strangers were so enthralled with one another was simply because they had yet to be introduced. Cursing his poor hosting skills, he stepped aside with a smile and politely invited the younger boy in.

Jack hovered in the doorway for a moment or two longer before nodding, whether to himself or in acceptance of Jason's suggestion, neither blond nor redhead knew; at any rate, he did step over the threshold, a grey towel wrapped tightly about his shoulders, closing the door gently behind him.

Now it was down to Jason to take charge of the silent conversation; he was, naturally, very excited, as not only had he met Jack half an hour sooner than anticipated, but he was also about to introduce two people, something he had never done before. He couldn't help but feel that by doing so, he would take one irreversible step closer to adulthood; and even though he had never performed an introduction before, Jason did know how it was done:

"Miss Carlisle," he intoned, quite formally, almost pompously, "this is Mister—Master?—_Mister_ Jack Teague; Mr Teague, Miss Alice Carlisle."

Oh God, had he done that right? Jason couldn't help but fret, his hands twisting nervously as two pairs of incredulous eyes turned on him. He smiled as they continued to stare at him, as bemused as though he had just uttered Arabic. And then Alice's greyish eyes had turned from him to regard Jack thoughtfully, her hands pressed primly to her stomacher, white fingers neatly interlaced. Something about Jack must have met her approval, for she stretched out a hand, white and smooth as marble, smiling politely as she waited for the younger boy to accept it.

It goes without saying that Jack viewed the proffered digits with one of fear's many cousins gnawing at his innards: gaucherie. What on earth did she want him to do? Hell, what was he _expected_ to do? Social niceties were one of the few things Peter had yet to (or rather, attempt to) teach him; Mr Armistade's reasoning was that Jack was too young to care for such triflings, and to be fair, the gentleman _was_ right; but now, trapped in a cabin with Miss Alice Carlisle's hand hovering expectantly under his nose, Jack found himself wishing that Mr Armistade _hadn't_ been so bloody understanding. Her long, white fingers and small, slender palm, outstretched as expectantly as they were, made his stomach squirm and intestines twitch.

"You're supposed to kiss it." It had been Alice Carlisle who had spoken, her voice bored and haughty; startled, Jack's dark eyes darted up to see her own pale pair looking superciliously down her nose at him.

"Beg pardon?" he asked stupidly, and Alice flicked back her red hair and rolled her cold, rain-coloured eyes in exasperation.

"My hand," she added, for clarity; "A gentleman would take my hand, bow down, and kiss my fingers."

There was something about the whole idea of kissing a stranger's hand that struck Jack as being particularly disgusting; and besides, Jack was beginning to find himself liking Miss Alice Carlisle less and less as the seconds dragged on.

"No," he said, and she raised her dark, slightly red eyebrows.

"'No'?" she repeated, her lips curling as though Jack had said something particularly stupid, or odd, or both. Beside them, Jason Armistade wrung his fingers and twitched nervously; as far as first introductions went, this, he was certain, was fast turning into one of the worse.

"No," Jack repeated, more firmly than before. "I'm not going to kiss your hand, Miss Alice Carlisle; furthermore, I don't _want_ to kiss your hand. Why should I? I ain't a gentleman. And besides," he added, mimicking her disdain with a sniff so accurate that Jason smiled despite himself, "I've no way of knowing where your hands have been."

Alice Carlisle's jaw tightened even as her cheeks reddened, and she snatched her hand away with considerably less grace than she had offered it.

"How discourteous you are, Mr Teague," she stated, and there was something about her voice, her words, her overall pomposity, that struck Jack as being very amusing; but he never had the chance to comment on it, let alone offer a witty repartee, for at that very moment came Mr Armistade's steady footfalls and clear, ringing voice.

"Are you boys ready to disem—Oh!" he stopped, his eyes falling on Alice, whose arrogance immediately fell away from her even features as, half-scandalised, half-intrigued, she took in the wet, well-spoken gentleman whose brown feet were bare and whose eyes looked at her with polite inquisitiveness. "I suppose you must be Miss Carlisle," he said instead, and Jason, after violently quelling the urge to leap into his father's arms, slinked away to make room for his parent.

"Yes sir," Alice answered meekly, jerking her head as she bobbed down into an unpractised curtsy; Jack couldn't help but find her apparent clumsiness viciously vindicating. Peter smiled, reaching down to briefly clasp her fingers, and Jack saw, with much suppressed hilarity, that the gentleman made no attempt at kissing her skin; clearly Mr Armistade consider Alice Carlisle to be more of a girl than the lady she visibly believed herself to be. As luck would have it, Peter Armistade was considerably handsome enough for Alice to ignore this slight shortcoming; her free hand reached up to coquettishly cover her lips as she quietly giggled, the way she'd seen girls three or four years her senior do when greeted by their beaux; behind her, Jack and Jason exchanged confused, disbelieving looks, perplexed by her sudden change in demeanour.

"Captain Jennings's niece, am I correct?" he queried, and she nodded again. In a gentler tone, he said softly, "I was very sorry to hear about your father; he was a good and honourable man."

This time, Alice made no gesture at giggling or nodding or any other simpering mannerism; her blue-grey eyes remained firmly fixed on the floor, and her shoulders were so still that Jack believed she'd stopped breathing.

"Thank you, sir," she said at last, and Peter, knowing he'd touched on a sensitive topic, merely nodded and drew her out of the cabin, away from the desk with its scrap of parchment and whittled charcoals, away from the two boys, one as fair as the other dark, who stood staring after the two of them.

"Captain Jennings has informed me that we're all but ready to dock," he threw back over his shoulder as he guided Alice towards the stairs. He paused mid-step, and hesitated.

"Jack?"

"Yes, Pe—Mr Armistade, sir?" Jack replied.

"You threw yourself into the sea."

"…Yees…?"

"And you've upset your mother."

"Very probably," Jack nodded cheerfully.

"So much so that she may just throttle you."

"So?"

"To _death._"

"…Oh." Jack's spirits were noticeably damper than before.

"Have you any plans for avoiding this?"

There was a silence in which both Jason and Alice watched curiously as Jack jutted out his lower lip and furrowed his smooth forehead.

"I'll simply pout and remind her how small and sweet and bouncy I am," he declared, and Peter snorted.

"Yes, because that's worked _so_ well before."


	4. This Night of Snakes

_A/N: Apologies for the long hiatus: real life events, a shifted and deliberate focus on my __wholly__ original writing (as opposed to original writing masquerading as fan fiction), and a (failed) attempt to make the shameless exposition in this chapter that little bit less shameless have got in the way of updating..._

**IV.**

It took three whole months for Jack to fully appreciate the various drawbacks that followed the arrival of the Armistades. The first was the appropriation of his bedroom by Nell; originally it had been intended for her brother, but when Eleanor had set eyes on the large, airy chamber with its white draperies and unobstructed view of the distant sea, she had promptly thrown a tantrum. ("But I want _that_ room! THAT room! Papa, you _promised!_") Though Jack had long since reconciled himself to the fact that he would be reduced to sharing a cot with his mother in the servants' quarters, that had been in the youthful, ignorant days when he had believed that _Jason_ would be the Armistade child who claimed ownership of the chamber. But _Nell_ had moved in instead, and this in itself created several more annoyances.

There was a passage in the room with the sea-centred view, leading down into the servants' quarters, and the kitchen with its stores of rice and spices beyond, and neither Jack nor Abby were much surprised to hear Miss Armistade lumbering down the steps with the intent of looting food that first night. Twenty minutes after her heavy footfalls first passed, Nell was heard remounting the stairs, humming to herself in anticipation of her feast. As Abby knew for a fact that Peter Armistade was sharing his bed with his wife, and therefore was restless, she decided to follow Nell and ensure that the child did not consume so much that she would vomit.

It was lucky for Nell that Abby did, for seconds after the maid had darted through the door, Nell had misjudged a particular step, lost her footing, and fell back in a flood of bread and molasses, straight into Mrs Teague's instinctively outstretched arms. Although she was not hurt, Eleanor had promptly burst into tears, and Jack had been forced to run down the stairs collecting the various foodstuffs Miss Armistade had dropped whilst his mother took the girl into their room and rocked her until the sobs had subsided. Since that night, Nell had been sneaking into the Teagues' quarters to snuggle up to Abby, and Mrs Teague made no attempt at disguising her delight in receiving such unwarranted affection.

Personally, Jack couldn't understand why Abby was so fond of Nell, though he did suspect that it was because the first thing the girl did upon setting foot on the docks was to look up at the woman who had been her father's mistress, pipe up, "Hello, Mrs Teague; you're very very pretty," and promptly wrap her arms around Abby's knees, causing the astonished mother to stumble in the process. To be perfectly honest, Jack wouldn't put much stock in Nell's embraces; alright, so she _had_ nearly dislocated Abby's kneecaps, but then again, she had also tried to cuddle a leper. Why Abby would see that welcoming hug as reason to look upon the blonde ball with maternal fondness was therefore something that Jack could never comprehend.

Another drawback of acquiring a new playmate was the rapid loss of position, in both society and the hierarchy of the household. In the days before the Armistades came, Jack and Abby had their own beds, and neither needed to awaken before mid- to late-morning; indeed, the only time Jack needed to be up and dressed at a particular time were the three days he attended the charity school, and their weekly outing to church, every Sunday morning. The rest of his time was spent in varied idleness; Peter might take him fishing, or his mother might occasionally venture forth to the market with her son clutching at her skirts, but ultimately Jack was free to prowl Mr Armistade's home as he saw fit. _Now,_ he and Abby shared a room, and had to be up at dawn, performing their menial, repetitive tasks. The first order of the day was to traverse a total of three miles as they travelled to the edge of a jungle and back in search of firewood, although to be fair this was not one of Jack's _official_ tasks; but the gentleman in him was such that he simply could not allow his beautiful mother to traverse three miles unchaperoned—she was very very pretty, so naturally he feared that she might be abducted by bandits! (Oddly enough, Abby seemed far more concerned that _Jack_ would be carried off by outlaws; he couldn't understand why.)

Once enough twigs had been gathered for the rest of the day and part of the following morning, Abby would invariably send her son off to feed the chickens. Jack hated feeding the chickens, partly because the chickens weren't even _theirs_; they belonged to a neighbour whose wife was very ill, and as such, could not feed his own bloody chickens. Horrible birds, they were, tall as his knee, and always attempting to peck his fingers off; he'll be damned if they weren't half as bad as the pack of mallards that had attacked him when he fell into their pond, that first and last time he travelled to England with Mr Armistade and his very pretty mother.

This particular task became doubly unpleasant the mornings when Nell, who appeared set on abandoning her own luxurious cotton bed to snuggle up to Abby and kick Jack out of his rightful place, chose to accompany him, spilling the corn and making such a racket that she sent the entire roost into a pecking frenzy; the one thing, Jack unwittingly discovered, worse than feeding chickens was chasing after various frenziedly squawking hens that had successfully escaped; and the one thing worse than _that_ was having various frenziedly squawking hens chasing after _him_ as _he_ attempted _his_ escape. The fact that Nell invariably stood to the side, laughing and clapping in undisguised amusement, only served to exacerbate his embarrassment and fuel his growing dislike. ("Kitty is a chicken-boy, Kitty is a chicken—OW! I'm telling _Papa_!" when Jack had had enough of her singing and had thrown a handful of corn into her face.)

And another thing about Nell—and here Jack realised that he really must stop complaining about Nell, for if somewhere in the world existed a manuscript in which all of his thoughts were transcribed, then readers casually perusing the contents might conclude that Nell would later become an adolescent love interest, and what a cliché _that_ would be—another thing about _Nell_ was how nobody else seemed to be aware of how damnably annoying she was. Abby thought her an angel; Jason viewed her with something bordering affection; and it goes without saying that her parents positively adored her, as parents tend to do. This left Jack with a handful of friends in whom he could vent—er, confide, and after the first seventeen times, they didn't appear interested in Nell's annoyingness at all.—Thus, it could be argued that Nell, in an unusually roundabout fashion, was the cause of a rift that grew between Jack and his friends, and one that lasted a very very long time; an entire afternoon, if he was not much mistaken.

Therefore, one could also argue that Nell, in an even more unusually roundabout manner, was the cause of a distant but ultimately enduring friendship between Jack and a man whom the boy publicly addressed as Rick, but mentally referred to as Mr Dirty Combless Unbathed Big-Haired Tramp; if he remembered correctly, Rick had initially protested at the nickname.

Jack had met Rick after his morning's 'lessons', on his way home for dinner; unlike Jason, whose respective health and education were deemed far too important to risk his physical or mental exposure to the parish's well-meaning but ultimately sub-par tuition, Jack still attended his weekly, three-day course; and on this particular day, the very afternoon when Jack had initiated the Nell-induced Rift between himself and his friends, the boy had decided to trot down to the docks. Before the Almost-Drowning Incident, Jack had never really seen much of the sea; afterwards, he was expressly forbidden from it. This, of course, only served to reinforce his curiosity, and it was a very good thing too, for if he hadn't been so determined to trot down to the docks and stare determinedly out to sea, then he would never ever have met Rick, who on that very day was trotting into town to curiously poke around. (Or rather, he _claimed_ to be trotting into town to curiously poke around; in reality, Rick was searching for a handful of hardworking dishonest men to whom he could sell his smuggled goods at exorbitant prices.)

Jack liked Rick; he had liked him from the moment he'd first laid eyes on the tramp-like man with the long tangled hair and guarded, intelligent eyes. As a matter of fact, Jack liked Rick so much he had promptly decided to abandon his plan of staring determinedly out to sea in favour of following him.

At first, Rick failed to notice his absurdly young stalker; and when he did, he had simply halted his languid, swaying steps, reach into the folds of his coat, and produce a rounded copper coin. Jack had caught it, pocketed it, and continued to tail after him.

Curious, Rick stopped, as did Jack, frown, and turned to see a boy, skinny, with messy hair and scruffy clothes, looking up at him with wide brown eyes.

"'Xactly what you think _you're_ doing?" he'd asked gruffly, the slur in his throaty voice doing little to mask the danger lurking beneath. In reply, Jack had clasped his hands tightly behind his back, shifted his weight to one foot, twisting the toe of the other into the ground, his reddening cheeks completing the picture of bashfulness.

"Sorry," he muttered abashedly; "It's just that you looked very very interesting, and I don't really see very very interesting people very very much."

One of Rick's dark eyebrows shot upwards at his words, and after taking a step or two forwards, he crouched down to peer with narrowed eyes into the smooth brown face of the boy with the flushing cheeks and lowered head. A hand, large and rough and brown, reached out to gently tilt Jack's chin back up.

"What's your name, boy?"

"I can't tell you," Jack mumbled apologetically, lowering his gaze to stare in fascination at a pouch hanging off of the man's belt.

"And why not?"

"Because Mum says I'm not allowed to speak to strangers."

Rick's lips parted in disbelief even as a laugh croaked out. "You've been _followin'_ me the past twenty minutes, and you say you're not allowed to talk to strangers?" He raised his dark eyebrows in a manner that seemed to say more than words ever could, and this prompted Jack to decide that there couldn't be any _real_ harm in disclosing his _first_ name.

"Jack, eh?" Rick repeated, once again knitting his eyebrows together as he continued to study him. "And I don't s'pose there's a last name to go with that?"

"No, sir," Jack lied through his teeth.

"Fair enough," the man shrugged off. "Then I'll be Rick to you." And he had offered out a hand, covered in uneven skin hardened and split by rope and tiller, to shake.

It was the first time Jack had been on a first-names basis with an adult before, and like his meeting with Alice, the boy was utterly bewildered as to what next to do. He remembered that Miss Carlisle had requested a kiss, but he somehow doubted that was what Rick expected.

The gentleman must have sensed his confusion, for with a smile he reached out to clasp Jack's hand in a firm, certain grip.

"There," he said with a smile, "that wasn't so hard, was it?"

Jack shook his head.

"Good," replied Rick; "Now bugger off." And he sauntered away with Jack left staring down at his hand in confusion. After a few more seconds of silent deliberation, Jack shrugged and resumed following him. The man merely rolled his eyes and promptly turned on his heel to face him.

"Shoo!" he pleaded with appropriate gesturing. Jack merely stood there, looking up at him with imploring brown eyes. "Go, on scurry! Scarper! Scuttle off! Scamper!"

Jack blinked.

"Er, look at—the er… thing over there!" but Jack was not so easily fooled, and continued with his disconcerting stare. Rick began to feel uncomfortable.

"…Exactly why are you so intent on pursuing me, boy?"

The boy's impassive face cracked into a wide, mischievous grin.

"Sorry, Rick; Mum says I'm not allowed to speak to strangers."

It was then that Rick decided he was in dire need of a drink; Jack naturally accompanied him, and so it came to be that over several pints of diluted gin, Rick was forced to listen to the child, who wasn't drinking at all, regale him with tales of misery and woe:

"…and now Jason's always too busy to play with me, and Mama likes Nell too much to like _me,_ and Mr Armistade likes Mrs Armistade too much to like me _or_ Mam, and now I'm a Chicken-Boy whilst _she's_ just another Breakfast Monkey!" he concluded in despair.

"…Woe is thee," Rick commented dryly as he took yet another gulp, whilst Jack nodded dolefully in agreement.

"_And_ it's all Nell's fault!" he suddenly remembered, and the adult rolled his eyes.

"Of course it is," he agreed with a patronising pat, whilst Jack nodded once more, glad that he had found a man on whom he could vent his feelings of helplessness and frustration.

"And another thing about the Armistades," he pressed whilst Rick yawned, uninterested, "is that when they came, they came with Captain Jennings, and Captain Jennings has a niece called Alice Carlisle, and she's always coming to see Nell, and she's _mean_ and hurts my feel-lings." He paused, if only for breath. "And it's all Nell's fault!" he cried, throwing his hands into the air in a gesture of despair; Rick silently began to count the hair on his knuckles, suddenly very grateful that Fate had denied him the burden of fatherhood.

"And now it's _your_ turn to talk," Jack suddenly commanded and, startled, Rick inhaled some of his gin. "Go on; what is Ricksie's life like?"

"…I have a boat…"

"Ooh! Is it big?"

"…Well, I've never had any complaints," Rick sniffed as, entranced, Jack leaned closer for more, the better to bombard him with irritating questions, the answers to which were always punctuated with indecorous interjections:

"And what do you do in your Big Boat? Do you go sailing? Oh, where do you sail to? 'Home, sometimes'? And where is Home, Sometimes? Ireland—which one? Well, I mean which island? Because there are lots and lots of islands in the world—I-R-E-L-A-N-D? That's not how you spell island! Ireland-Ireland? What's the difference between Ireland-Ireland and a normal island?—No, wait Rick! Please don't leave me!_—Oh,_ Ireland-Ireland is near Wales, is it? Do they eat all your fish?—Wait, Wales is a _place?_ What a funny name for a place. And where is this Wales-the-place? Near England! I've been to England, y'know!—Have you ever been to England? _Really?_ Did the ducks attack you too?"

Despite himself, Rick found the incessant prattling, and by extension, Jack, beginning to grow on him—after several pints of ale, that is.

* * *

He shouldn't have been reduced to this.

He was a pirate, rogue, cad, scallywag, and casual murderer: he should _not_ have been reduced to this.

"_No,_" the boy said, and Rick glowered as a small brown hand smacked him petulantly on the shoulder. "No. Not that way. _That_ way. _There_; we live over _there._"

He should not _be reduced to this…_

Rick swayed to a stop and, blinking blearily, looked about him. The night was young, very very young, a toddler of nights, and usually at this time of ni—well, late evening—Rick was more or less lucid.

…But there was something about little Jack—a sort of overpowering _annoyingness_—that the man found impossible to deal with whilst sober…

"NO! Over there, over _there_!"

"…Stop pulling my hair, boy."

"Go the right way then!" commanded the boy, his scrawny arm tightening around Rick's neck; despite Rick's quiet growl, there was a distinctive tug on his scalp, as though Jack was steering a horse, and a particularly slow one at that. (Which he was. Metaphorically.)

"I am _not_ a pack mule."

"Then why do you look like one? OW!" he yelped as Rick reached down and pinched the boy's ankle. "Ow ow ow ow OW!"

Rick smirked at the child's howl of pain and, being thus avenged, pointed towards a rather respectable-looking street. "That way, is it?" he asked in a pleasant sort of voice. Against his shoulder, he felt the boy nodding.

"'s," he confirmed, and yawned obnoxiously. Feeling Jack beginning to slip down, Rick jerked his shoulders slightly, causing Jack to yelp and cling tighter.

"You tried to push me off!" he accused.

"Did not."

"Did too."

"Did NOT!"

"Did _too_!"

"Don't tempt me, boy."

"…Pout," Jack scowled, and pulled truculently at a lock of hair. Rick's reply was to grab hold of one of Jack's ankles and twist it in silent warning.

"You're _mean,_" Jack sulked, and nestled even closer to Rick. "I like you." Rick nodded, satisfied, and wobbled towards the street Jack had indicated.

"Stop!" the miniature hitchhiker commanded, a lock of hair clenched in each little fist, "Stop; we're here now."

"Oh?" queried Rick, looking around in interest. Whilst perhaps not on par with the expansive country home that one would expect of a gentleman of leisure, little Jack's place of residence, towering at two storeys (three, if one counts the attic), constructed of a light-coloured stone, imported, no doubt, and telltale wooden beams, had very clearly been designed for a gentleman of fashion. Many amongst the wealthier of the expatriate community, military and civilian alike, had settled for sprawling bungalows, but this, like all the other homes on… Somerset Square, was it?… had very clearly been deliberately designed as replicates of a typical London townhouse. Except that they were detached, of course. And they were cleaner. And had larger gardens. And not so many beggars. And soldiers patrolling the area. And palm trees. And monkeys in them—and that was without Rick imagining Jack climbing them.

"Got a lot of redcoats, I see," he commented, kneeling down and allowing Jack to hop off.

"What? Oh," Jack responded, looking groggily around. In the dark, Rick imagined that he had furrowed his brow. "We don't usually have this many… just a patrol every hour, normally… sometimes we give them food… sometimes we throw things at them… I don't know understand what's going on _at all_…"

Rick was watching two such gentlemen near them cautiously; his hand reached down beneath the folds of his coat to rest on his pistol, ready to draw.

"Perhaps you ought to get inside, Jack. There might be trouble."

Jack's ears pricked up at this; his entire body appeared to stiffen, alert, all sleeplessness banished.

"What _sort_ of trouble?" he asked eagerly, and Rick groaned in foreboding.

"A _bad_ sort of trouble," he elaborated in a tone which he _hoped_ would brook no arguments.

Jack was looking both enquiring and condescending. "I _know,_" he said, "what other sort of trouble _is_ there?"

"Get inside, Jack."

"But what about—?"

"_Get inside._"

Jack nodded, turned, hesitated, and trotted back to Rick, his paw reaching up to grab the smuggler's. "Come along then!" he said cheerfully, and Rick's eyes widened as the child proceeded to drag him towards the nearest house with unprecedented strength.

"What d'y'think—"

"_Shush,_" hissed Jack, continuing to string the adult along. They rounded a corner, diving into the shadows; it was a clear night, but dark, with only starlight to illuminate the back of the building. But Jack seemed to know the entrance like the back of his hand; and why wouldn't he? He was very obviously a servant's son; no doubt he was used to using back entrances.

"Hide over here!" Jack said, navigating him pass a trough and some gardening instruments to what Rick assumed from the outline was an overhanging tree. It was only then that Rick realised what the boy was planning.

"Oh, I _see,_" he said, abruptly perking up; "what you're planning to do is wait until all the help are tucked safely away in their beds, and then you'll sneak back out here and let me in, eh Jackie?" If free board and an opportunity to loot indiscriminately was what came of befriending little rapscallions, then Rick had just unearthed an entirely new line of business. It certainly beat that one a few years back in which he would woo and wed young heiresses before making off with as much of her family's wealth as he and his crew could carry. (After consummating the marriage first, of course; to plunder and pillage her father's home was perfectly above-board, but to just _leave_ without taking the bride's romantic feelings into account was just cruel. Unless, of course, the bride was ugly, in which case Rick felt it his duty to prepare her for the cruelties the world would rain upon her hereditary misfortune.) It was when Rick ended up with one stubborn little hellcat he just couldn't shake off that he realised he should stop and turn pirate proper, but never mind that now; what's done is done, what passed had passed, and it was about time he exchanged the realms of expositional reminiscence for the living, breathing present:

Judging from the sounds and shadows, Rick assumed that the boy had turned to face him; when he spoke, it was in a tone of casual incredulity.

"Er, no Ricksie… not quite. You see, you're a complete _stranger,_ yes?"

"I happen to know myself quite well, as't happens," Rick sniffed.

"Ah, but you're a complete stranger to _me._ I can't go around letting complete strangers into P—Mr Armistade's home! Mum'll beat me."

_You shouldn't go around telling complete strangers where you live either,_ Rick thought irritably, knowing as he did that he would be able to retrace the route to Somerset Square with great ease, in the right circumstances (that is to say, when it was this dark and he was this drunk). Aloud, he asked of the boy, "Ah, your ma beat you regularly, does she?" It didn't seem as though corporal punishment had achieved much.

"Er, no…" Jack confessed. "But she might if I let a complete stranger into the house; after all, she's always threatening to beat me for _smaller_ things."

"And I assume that she never does?"

"Not _yet,_" Jack allowed, hesitant. "But I heard her telling Pe—Mr Armistade that, that so long as there's the threat of a beating for _smaller_ things, it'll er, stop me from doing the _bigger_ things that will deserve it, because then I won't do the bigger things, and so I won't deserve it, see?"

_Oh, I _see, realised Rick in a flash of insight. _She's one of _those_ parents, eh?_ "So I suppose this means that she won't have to beat you _at all then,_ am I right?"

"Exactly!" Jack sounded very proud. "'Cause I won't do the _big_ things that will make her beat me, see?"

"Ah." It was clear to Rick that one of pair had the other wrapped tightly round their finger; although whether it was the mother or the son was debateable.

"So what _I_ think you should do," Jack was saying, "is stay here until the Bad Trouble's over, and then you can sneak back to your boat—"

"—ship—"

"—whatever—and go to sleep and then do whatever it is that you Ricksies do. Night night." And he scampered off towards the back door without another thought, leaving Rick to lean against the tree trunk in confusion.

"Oh and er, Rick?"

"Hmm?"

"You might want to be careful with standing under that tree for too long; only Mrs Howell says that she thought she saw a few snakes on the branches today."

Rick looked up at the low-lying branches, and promptly ducked.

"But you were the one who—" he began, but stopped when he heard the creak of the door, followed by a sudden flood of yellow candlelight. "Bugger," he muttered, and with another nervous glance at the tree, slowly snuck away towards the stream of light. With so many redcoats crawling about the place, it would of course be foolhardy to commit murder; but this thought didn't make the image of throttling Jack any less tempting.

The way was not yet clear, and it was for this reason that Rick loitered, moving instinctively closer towards the light.

Which led to his making a very interesting discovery.

Near ground level was a grating; a grating with some sort of reinforced mosquito net, no doubt to keep snakes and other unpleasant creatures at bay, and wooden shutters, to block out the wind and rain in the monsoon season. All he could see of the window was a rectangular outline of light; and then there was a clattering sound, and the outline became a fully fledged rectangle as the wooden shutters were swung back cautiously.

"And the other bit too," he heard a little girl's voice say. "It's so hot and stuffy in here, Mrs Teague."

"Of course, Nell," he heard another voice murmur distractedly, and it was a voice so distressingly familiar that it made Rick freeze.

…_But I thought she was dead,_ thought Rick, which was man's default explanation for unsolved disappearances.

And then: _Bloody hell, she's _working_? Willingly? That's not the Abby I know._

Assuming, of course, that this Mrs Teague was _his_ Mrs Teague, rather than a completely different Mrs Teague who shared both Mrs Teague's name and voice. After replaying the last thought in his mind, Rick concluded that there _was_ a logical reasoning behind it. But assuming that this Mrs Teague _was_ his Mrs Teague, then—then—Oh God…

_But I hate him!_ he thought, clinging for dear life onto what was left of his reason. _He's the most irritating, exasperating, infuriating little git I've ever met! The only other person I've wanted to strangle more is his m—Ah, so _that's_ where he got it from…_

Well, at least he didn't _have_ to admit to fathering Jack; if the past four hours were anything to judge by, it wasn't exactly an achievement to be proud of…

"Mrs Teague?" he heard the little girl say.

"Yes, Nellie?"

"You haven't opened the other bit yet."

"Haven't I? Oh yes, you're right."

"Will you open the other bit please?" pressed the little girl.

"What, even after Mrs Howell told us about the cobra she saw?"

"What _about_ the cobra, Mrs Teague?"

"The big, _poisonous_ cobra that might slide inside if I was to open the grating; what would we do if _that_ was to happen, Nellie?" There was an undertone of worry in her voice, one that she seemed determined to suppress.

"It's all right," he heard the little girl say cheerfully; "I have a big stick, see?" There was a _thwack thwack thwack,_ followed immediately by a definite _snap._

"Oh, _Nell_!" he heard the woman say, the words half-muffled by a sob; and then there were rapid footfalls, as though someone was running across a room and up some stairs.

"Mrs Teague?" the little girl cried out worriedly. "Mrs Teague, where are you going?"

There was a sound of shuffling, shifting, as though the child was detangling herself from a set of blankets in the hopes of following the woman. Then he heard her cry out: "_Kitty!_" and the struggling became even more desperate. Intrigued, Rick leaned closer, his fingers gently prying at the half-opened grating. He pushed the steel-reinforced net gently; it swung inwards without either of the occupants noticing, allowing him an unobstructed view of a blonde creature struggling to escape the confines of a small bed, and a rather guilty-looking Jack who had evidently sneaked in with the hope of avoiding all kinds of confrontation.

"Kitty, Kitty! We were all so worr—"

"Shut up, Nell."

"But Kitty," the flaxen-haired creature insisted, now tottering towards him, "Kitty, Mrs Te—"

"_Shut up, Nell._"

"—was _crying,_" Nell completed, and then added bashfully, "And _I_ missed you too."

The potentially sweet moment was ruined by Jack's squeak of terror as Nell dived towards him.

"AARGH! _Nell_—"

"Bad _bad_ kitty, running away like that!" There was a thumping sound, followed by another yelp; the girl had released him from her bone-crushing hug only to hit him.

Twice.

"_Everybody_ was worried about you!" she yelled. "Papa rounded up every Company officer and all the soldiers on duty and told them to go out and look for you! And—And Mrs Howell said that you got _eaten_ by a _snake_! And Mrs Teague has been dropping dishes and breaking vases and _everything,_ she was so worried about you! Does she know you're back yet?"

"Oh, was _that_ what the redcoats were for?" asked Jack, rubbing his shoulder and apparently unaware of the second half of Nell's speech. The girl nodded vigorously.

"Yes! —And Papa's gone out to the docks to see if you're there. —Have you talked to Mrs Teague yet?"

"Who, Ma? Er, not quite…"

Rick winced and slapped both hands over his ears in the hope of evading permanent deafness by Nell's sudden boom of "MRS TEAGUE! _MRS TEAGUE!_ KITTY'S BACK, I FOUND HIM, I FOUND HIM—"

"Nell, _shut up!_"

"—DOWN HERE, HE'S _DOWN HERE_—Oof!" as Jack, clearly turning the tables for the first time in his life, barrelled into Nell. Rick watched in horrified fascination as the two children wrestled for dominance; Nell was, quite naturally, winning.

"Kitty…" he heard Nell say in amazement, "Kitty, are you… did you… do you want to _hug_ me?"

Jack was so shocked by the very notion that he too stopped struggling. When Rick next peeked, he saw the two of them sitting on the floor, staring at one another in frank amazement over a respectable distance betwixt them.

"I, er…" Jack stuttered, and was it Rick's imagination, or was he blushing? Then again, it could be from the physical exertion; no offence meant, but if one was Jack's size, then to tackle Nell required much, ah… effort. "I, um… I didn't mean… I, I…"

And as if he hadn't witnessed enough excitement for one evening, Abby herself—beautiful, blue-eyed, bull-headed Abby, she who had expressly (and loudly) forbade consummation of her marriage to Teague until he had fully recompensed her English father—burst in and snatched the boy up with cries of relief.

"You _stupid_—you _selfish_—you, you—oh, _Jack_!" In the background, Rick saw Nell cross her arms and scowl as she saw Jack _unhesitatingly_ hug his mother back.

"I _found_ him," she sulked, determined to recoup her losses. "Do _I_ get a hug? Do I get a thank-you? Do I get chocolate?"

Suddenly, he couldn't watch; suddenly, he couldn't listen; suddenly, it was too much…

Very, very gently, Rick reached out to pull the—he used the word 'grating' only because it was too heavily reinforced to be deemed 'net'—towards him, shielding him, veiling him. Then he sat with his back against the wall in a state of what some might refer to as tranquil shock.

It goes without saying that Rick had known of Abby's, ah… delicate condition. After all who, _exactly,_ was the one forced by his supposed inferior to clear away all physical evidence of morning sickness? _Who_ was the one who scoured the city of Bombay in search of appropriate accommodation? _Who_ was the one who completed all manner of husbandly tasks without reaping _any_ of the rewards?

But none of his past exploitation mattered half so much as the certain knowledge that Abby was _alive._ Alive and, if Rick knew her as well as he believed, more than willing to castrate her husband, if she ever set eyes on him again.

Though to be fair, Rick had never _intended_ to abandon his young bride in an unknown city; fate had simply unfolded that way. It had been his full intention to cast his illicit net out to the northern shores of Africa, rumoured to be swelling with gold and other precious cargo, for the benefit of his wife and then-pending child; that Rick was unlucky enough to be arrested by the appropriate authorities was hardly his own doing. That Rick was _lucky_ enough to be mistaken as another criminal, one whose maximum sentence was transportation and twelve years' hard labour, was simply fortuitous.

So Rick found himself returning to London, where he was tried and sentenced as Ned Lettings for embezzlement, fraud and petty theft, receiving maximum sentence and a chorus of disapproving glares. Still, it was better than hanging, and after two years and absolutely _no help from his crewmen,_ followed by six months of quiet conspiracy, Rick had escaped and returned to India (after acquiring a ship, plundering vessels and executing petty revenge) to find that Abby had… disappeared. And how could Rick possibly hope to find her in a foreign (though admittedly anglicised) port home to thousands?

To neutralise his guilt (and indeed sense of responsibility), Rick told himself that Abby had passed away in childbirth, that the babe was born dead, and other such variations on the same lie. In the ensuing years he conned and robbed, lied and tricked, gambled and… well, of _course_ he had whored. And grew out his hair. And stopped shaving. And neglected to bathe. In short, he went through all the motions of a man whose heart had broke beyond repair.

But Abby was _alive_… (And so was the child, unfortunately.)

Well he _had_ to stay in Bombay now. Not forever, mind you, but long enough to lure her away from Somerset Square, to talk to her, to convince her that he hadn't meant to neglect her, to spirit her away like he had done nigh a decade before…

Galloping hooves jerked him from his scheming reverie, and Rick hurriedly dove towards the tree, trusting the shadows be enough to conceal him.

It was, he had to admit, a fine specimen: a beautiful stallion he was, strong and sleek and supple; and the horse wasn't too bad either. The animal seemed to be an extension of the gentleman, and gentleman he most certainly was. There was more to it than the cut of his cloth or public-school posture or air of quietly constrained superiority; there was _something_—quality, aura, _je ne sais quoi,_ call it what you will—that made Rick want to deck him from here to yesterday, the _true_ mark of the distinguished gentleman… This tosser had it too, and in abundance.

He also had Abby, who (after pounding up a flight of stairs and rushing through the kitchen) had flung herself into his arms before he'd even finished dismounting; that might have contributed to Rick's mounting desire to draw his sword and systematically separate certain appendages from the rest of this toff's strategically toned body.

"He's back, he's back," she sobbed into his shoulder. "I don't know where he's been or what he's been doing—"

"Sh, sh; it's alright now, he's safe—"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to trouble you f-for naught…"

"It wasn't any trouble at all; he's back and that's all that matters…"

Said so _understandingly,_ so _comfortingly,_ so fucking _caringly_; as if he wasn't enjoying every single minute of Abby's body pressed against his, the smarmy bastard…

Rick bit his lip, incensed; how _dare_ she find herself another man! He'd only been away nine years.

"I'll call the groom," the toff was saying, stroking her back soothingly (_He should find his own woman to touch, the slimy twit_), "and then we can go inside." (_Oh I wonder what you plan on doing in _there,_ you feckin' lecher, you…_)

So the groom was called and summoned for, and Abby disappeared for a night of God knows what sort of depravity, the bastard's arm snaking round her waist as the servant led the stallion to the stables, leaving Rick to fume in the darkness of the night.

He couldn't believe it; not only was Abby alive, she was also indulging in a bit of carefree adultery to boot! What sort of example did that set for their son? Especially when _she_ was the one who had insisted that Rick leave piracy for a respectable, stable sort of life, with _her,_ for the good of the child…

The child… Jack.

Of course; the boy was the key.

In this night of snakes, Rick smiled a viper's smile.

Oh, he wasn't going to _harm_ him or anything like that; after all, Jack was _his_ son too. —Only he wasn't, as Rick would never own up to fathering such an _irritating_— But that could change, that could change; and furthermore, it _would_ change.

Once upon a time, Abby had told him, with much bending forwards and heavy breathing, that she had loved him, and always would: provided that he changed his clothes, and his profession, and his source of income, and his hair—in short, his way of life, his very being. Above all, she stipulated that he acquire a moral outlook; then—and _only_ then, she might… slip off her nightdress, perhaps? And lie beside him, perchance? And permit him to lie _with_ her—

Ahem, cough-cough; Rick cleared his throat and self-consciously adjusted his shirt. The _point_ of—No no, the _thrust_ of the matter—Oh God Almighty, he couldn't even _see_ her and already she was doing it… And doing it with somebody else, he had no doubt.

In short (which he wasn't), Abby had somehow manipulated Rick into agreeing that after one fell loot off the coast of Africa, he would relinquish every fact, feature and facet of what would become his former life, for the greater _moral_ good of their budding family. (Whilst simultaneously living off of his illicit gains, of course.) Being the illegitimate, though beloved daughter of a wealthy English merchant and his _bibi,_ and recalling the way she and her mother had been segregated, not just within the household but the community at large; forced to live on nothing more than her father's uncertain kindness… Well, Abby had been acutely aware of morality, and was determined to instil it within her own children, no matter what.

And now Rick was equally determined to eliminate it.

If he'd been a little more sober—if he hadn't seen her in _his_ arms, he'd never have thought of it. But he wasn't, and he had; and so Rick sat leaning against the trunk of the tree, scheming and plotting and formulating plans he would never follow through; because at the end of the day, Jack would fall astray of his own accord. He was, after all, _his_ son; and as such, prone to moral bankruptcy.

_Petty revenge,_ Rick thought, clambering unsteadily to his feet: _the best sort there is._

Somewhere behind him came a hissing and, remembering with sudden clarity Jack's warning about snakes, Rick beat a hasty retreat.


End file.
